A year ago we visited Aichelin in Austria for a tour of their facility and one of the items that the company was very proud of was a relatively new product for them something called “heatXpress”. This is a step chain conveyor furnace with press hardening designed for hot forming of car body parts. While strictly speaking we would not call it a heat treat furnace it was quite an interesting product. We mention this today because Aichelin has been doing a great deal of testing in house on some complex parts with the results being unveiled at a trade show in Shanghai this week we believe. One of the photos below shows the test system at the Aichelin facility in Austria.
“Premier/BeaverMatic Spray/Dunk Washers were recently manufactured and shipped from Premier’s new 40,000 Ft² manufacturing facility in Farmington Hills, MI. The repeat customer is an international aerospace firm, this facility is in southeastern US. The Spray/Dunk Washers are designed to clean 1,250 lbs of heat-treated material, using both a full immersion oscillating dunk cycle, propeller agitation; and also using a separate high-pressure, with solution, spray cycle.”
Back in 2016 the worlds largest commercial heat treater acquired privately owned Syracuse Heat Treating in Syracuse, NY in what was an excellent fit for both companies. July 2017 the facility suffered a devastating fire as you can read about in this press release; “Bodycote experienced a fire at its Syracuse, NY location on Friday, July 6. There were no injuries but the facility has been rendered unserviceable. Bodycote will continue to provide heat treating services for customers from other Bodycote locations in the region via Bodycote’s freight logistics network until Syracuse services are reinstated. Questions should be directed to Dan McCurdy, President of Bodycote AGI NAA at [email protected].” Since that time the firm has done an incredible job of servicing the existing customers through other locations while they searched for a new location-the search is now concluded. Just recently Bodycote purchased an existing 58,000 square foot industrial manufacturing facility at 8 Dwight Park Drive in the nearby town of Geddes, NY. Presumably now the company will start placing purchase orders for new equipment to replace what was lost in the fire, we are assuming batch IQ furnaces and vacuums.
Recently we did an appraisal of some operating heat treat furnaces which included a number of vacuum furnaces. Amongst the items we looked at was this furnace, one which still has us scratching our heads. At first glance it appeared pretty standard, an older VFS vacuum furnace-really nothing out of the ordinary until we looked at the chamber itself which in big letters says “AGF”. Now AGF “American Gas Furnace Company” we are familiar with having seen a number of rotary retort furnaces the company has built over the years (although we believe the company is gone with anything left now belonging to Pemberton Fabricators). We have never heard of AGF building a vacuum furnace or even a chamber so where this system originated from is anybody’s guess.
“Can-Eng Furnaces International Limited was recently awarded a contract from a research organization for the supply of a Rapid Heating Furnace to be used for Light Weight Hot Stamping & Formed Aluminum Automotive Component product development. This organization will integrate the aluminum sheet heating furnace with existing equipment to support both Automotive Manufacturers and Tier 1 Suppliers throughout North America for the development of new safety critical light weight structural components.
Can-Eng was chosen for this project as it provided significant light weight, thin walled automotive structural component development experience. The result of this experience and collaboration provides the customer with a unique rapid heating furnace system which offers significant reduction in floor space requirements, flexibility for processing a wide range of product sizes and flexible operating temperatures required for various stamped and formed products. The system will be fully integrated with flexible robotic handling and material handling automation.
Can-Eng Furnaces International is a global provider and leader of state-of-the-art thermal processing systems. Headquartered in Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, Can-Eng is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company. For further information please contact Can-Eng at [email protected] or fu
Looks like Michael Cousin very recently started with furnace manufacturer Diablo Furnaces, LLC., in Machesney Park, Illinois, USA as Director of Technology. Michael has had a long distinguished history in the heat treating industry having worked at companies such as AFC-Holcroft and most recently as Senior Technical Manager-Atmosphere Products for Ipsen. Diablo Furnaces is a relatively new player in the industry as you can see from the press release below dated June 14, 2017. Since 2017 we have had several press releases about the company, the most recent one just a few months ago when Bill Gornicki of ALD Vacuum Systems left the company to become CEO of Diablo. We have yet to see one of their furnaces in the field but we understand the company had a pretty full order book.
“MACHESNEY PARK, ILLINOIS – June 14, 2017 – A company that built a niche servicing and refurbishing million dollar machines in the gear industry launched a spinoff company to build a new line of heat treating furnaces for those same customers. The new operation, Diablo Furnaces, saved five employees from the unemployment lines and Diablo is looking to add more. Machine Tool Builders was founded in 1995 to rebuild and re-control – add new controls to modernize machinery – large machines that make gears or work on gears. The company does this work for large national conglomerates such as Boeing and Caterpillar but also for local firms including Forest City Gear and Rockford Toolcraft. MTB eventually diversified into selling foreign brands as well, such as Germany-based Burri Grinding and Dressing Machines, Switzerland’s Donner+Pfister and HERA Hobbing Machines from South Korea.
Several years ago, MTB saw an opportunity to break into a related industry. When a gear is finished it has to be baked in a furnace to make it harder. Without the heat treating, the soft metal would wear down in a day. Machine Tool Builders began servicing and refurbishing heat treating furnaces. Many of those furnaces were built by a decades-old Rockford, Illinois firm. When that company closed suddenly and its assets sold to a Michigan company, MTB added key personnel from that firm and began using that institutional knowledge to design and build new furnaces under the name Diablo Furnaces. Diablo builds internal quench, temper/draw, box and car bottom furnaces that are custom built for each customer, based on material, temperature range, volume and available floor space. Diablo launched in February with five employees and a goal to do $6 million in sales this year. The company was 50 percent to that goal by the end of April. Diablo now needs more workers to keep up with market demand.”
For today August 18, 2019 we are going to start out with an updated news item from Germany. Bach in March of this year we mentioned that Jens Baumann & Edgar Falkowski in Germany had parted ways with controls company UPC (the UPC ad can be found on the right side of this page). As it turns out the two started their own controls company Millivolt GmbH also in Germany. Jens and Edgar are friendly, knowledgeable fellows and we wish them the best of luck however we question whether there is a need for another controls company in an already crowded market. “March 2019; One of the world’s largest and best known suppliers of controls for the heat treat industry, United Process Controls has seen a couple of personnel changes in Europe; “United Process Controls GmbH and Messrs Edgar Falkowski (previously Director Engineering) and Jens Baumann (previously Director Sales) parted company on 25 February 2019. As current contact person in place of Mr. Falkowski in the Engineering Division please contact our Ms. Soldani, phone +49 7161 94888-38, e-mail; [email protected]. Our existing team will continue to work with you in a professional and uninterrupted manner; the replacement of both positions is already in progress.” In May of this year we had a news item from Sweden-specifically it was about a company by the name of Epiroc making a very large investment in a brand new, state of the art captive heat treat department. We can now share a bit more information with you; there will be two completely different technologies at this location when the expansion is finished. The first is a brand new Vacuum Carburizing Line from a European supplier, the second is an ADI (Austemper Ductile Iron) furnace from a North American supplier. “May 2019;Epiroc has held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new heat treatment plant for rock drills at one of its global manufacturing hubs in Örebro, Sweden. With heat treatment an essential part of rock drill manufacturing, the top-modern plant – to be built through an expansion of the current workshop building – will further boost rock drill quality and performance, according to Epiroc. It will also lower customers’ total cost of ownership and enable higher production volumes, the company added. Helena Hedblom, Epiroc’s Senior Executive Vice President Mining and Infrastructure, said: “The investment is a key step toward ensuring that this first-class manufacturing site remains as productive and competitive as possible for the long term.” Production at the 1,400 m² heat treatment plant will be able to run 24 hours a day thanks to automation. It is expected to be up and running by late-2020. Energy efficiency is a key focus for the design of the plant, with, for example, residual heat recycled internally to heat buildings.”
In the US we see that things are “hoping” with companies making substantial investments in more equipment-needless to say we only care about the heat treat investments. For instance commercial heat treater American Heat Treating up in Connecticut is making a very large investment in more equipment, give us a few weeks and we can give you all the details. Several heat treat news sources mentioned how a company by the name of Mueller is planning on building a new foundry in Illinois; “Mueller Water Products Inc. plans to build a new, state-of-the-art foundry in Decatur, Ill. The facility will be one of the largest finished-goods brass foundries in the world. It will increase Mueller’s production capacity to meet current and future demands. Construction of the foundry, which is expected to employ up to 250, will begin in fall 2019. According to Mueller, the Decatur foundry is part of a multi-year project that will provide operational efficiencies that will directly benefit its customers, employees and the local community.” What the other news sources did not say (because they weren’t aware of it) was that the company has recently been making some investments in heat treating equipment for their other plants. For instance their location in Michigan recently bought a large box furnace. Commercial heat treater Thermal Metal Treating in Aberdeen, North Carolina is another company investing in more equipment, specifically a continuous heat treat line. We visited the plant earlier this year and we have to say they are some of the nicest people we have met.
Recently we updated our list of the Largest Commercial Heat Treaters in North America, however every time we update the list we get more suggestions about other companies that should possibly make the list. Two which were suggested to us this past week and that are definite possibilities are the Stackgroup of companies in the US Northwest and Continental Heat Treating in California. In the case of Stack Metallurgical based in Portland, Oregon we would agree that yes they are one of the largest in North America with 3 locations and a fourth dedicated to “HIPPING” being built. Continental, owned by Mr. Jim Stull is a company which we don’t know a great deal about except we believe they have a total of 3 locations around the LA area. Aalberts (the second largest commercial heat treater in Europe) recently made the news because of their acquisition of salt specalist Applied Process in the US, an acquisition which pushed them onto our list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America. If you want to know more about the company they recently announced their financial results which can be found at https://aalberts.com/. We will warn you though that because heat treating is only a portion of what the company does it might be tricky to track down how their individual heat treats are doing. We are pleased to introduce our most recent advertiser, “Nakal” the largest furnace builder in Russia, a company which we plan on visiting in a few weeks when we attend the upcoming heat treat exhibition in Moscow. Their ad can be found on the right hand side of this page.
We haven’t had much news from India recently so here are a couple of small items. Shubhan Singh was recently promoted to Engineer-Heat Treatment & Metallurgy at Hi-Tech Gears Ltd. Hi-Tech Gears with headquarters in Guragon, India is a supplier of transmission components and a very large captive heat treater with a mixture of sealed quench, fluidized bed, induction and continuous furnaces. Far and away the largest commercial heat treater and furnace manufacturer in India are our good friends at Dowa Hightemp. The company has multiple commercial heat treats around the country and seems to keep adding more locations. On the furnace manufacturing side of things the company recently announced that in the past couple of years they have provided 3 pusher type CGC furnace lines with press quenching and robotics included to a Swedish-Italian facility in India. And that concludes our Monday Morning Briefing.
Distortion and its possible causes
The heat treatment of steel is necessary in order to manipulate the mechanical strength and metallurgy of the steel the manipulation of physical characteristics of the steel is necessary for prior machining and for the successful performance of the finished machined product.
Distortion is what every heat treatment practitioner dreads. Yet it is an aspect of the heat treatment process that cannot be avoided, particularly when austenitizing and quenching. It will happen, and nothing can stop it. However, steps can be taken to reduce the distortion but it cannot be eliminated. Distortion can be divided into three groups with each one either individually, or collectively contributing to the final
result of distortion.
Size change (meaning diamond shows stability)
phase change (caused as a result of the application of heat above the A1 line and A3 line (or the ACM line).
Residual stress initially caused at either rolling, forging, fabrication and machining.
All of the above can and will contribute to the occurrence of distortion.
Size change. Size change will occur as a direct result of the phase change occurrence due to the application of heat to the steel
Phase change. Phase changes will occur as a direct result of the application of heat to the steel which is necessary to change the structure from a body centered cubic lattice structure (ferrite)(BCC) to a Face Centered Cubic lattice structure (Austenite)(FCC) to a Body Centered to Tetragonal lattice structure (Martensite) (BCT) (if rapid cooling is employed).
Each of these phases has its own volumetric size and will change as the steel chemistry changes from steel grade to steel grade. Thus, a size change will occur. This further assumes, that all of the transformation products from the formed austenite to the freshly formed martensite is totally and absolutely complete. Variations in the rapid cooling rate will create the potential for residual or retained austenite.
Retained austenite is not stable. This means that it will progressively transform from the residual austenite to untempered martensite. This means that there will be both a progressive dimensional change and hardness value increase.
Induced residual stress
Induced residual stress occurs as a direct result of;
Rolling
Forging
Fabrication
Machining
The above will all contribute to the distortion, which will occur at the final heat treatment. The induced stress can only be removed by the application of heat. Heat is applied when the final heat treatment procedure is commenced, thus stress relieving will occur.
Grain size deformation as a result of Rolling, a similar effect occurs with forging. Grain size changes as a result of temperature and over soaking with time. The stress relieving will occur as the steel is being raised up to its appropriate austenitizing temperature. So, the
steel is already distorted when it achieves the austenitizing temperature. Good heat treatment (normalizing after forging where appropriate) will contribute to a reduction in the distortion, but not the elimination of the distortion.
This is the second time we have mentioned captive heat treater Milacron LLC., in Ohio in our news section. The first was back in 2012 when the company replaced their Nitrogen/Methanol system with a new Endothermic generator.
“Super Systems, Inc. recently completed major upgrades to the heat treating assets at Milacron LLC in Mt. Orab, OH. The end goal of a modern controls and SCADA infrastructure led the Milacron team to SSi knowing that they had the resources and skills to tackle a job as large as this one. Included in the scope of work were new control cabinets, atmosphere flow panels, SCADA software and a new ammonia dissociator. Equipment addressed as part of the upgrade were (2) pit nitriders, (2) pit tempers, (1) pit carburizer, (1) integral quench furnace, (1) batch temper, (1) oil quench and the new ammonia dissociator with controls. All furnaces are capable of running recipes to automate processes creating an easy to use interface for operators and centrally controlled and operated using the SuperDATA SCADA package providing proof of process and quick access to real-time and historical process and load data. “We were very happy to be the chosen provider of the heat treat automation project with Milacron” explains Bob Fincken, National Sales Manager with Super Systems. “Our products and services were a perfect fit for the heat treat department needs addressing gas flow control with our eFlo product line, recipe controls with our 9205 and 9215 products, data acquisition with SuperDATA and all the installation and project management carried out by our Field Engineering Team” he continues. Jeff Bissantz, Project Engineer, who led the Milacron team said, “We are Very Happy we chose Super Systems over the competition. The Quality and Workmanship sets them apart from others in the Industry.”
Super Systems Inc., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been developing and manufacturing products for the thermal processing industry since 1995. SSi’s products include probes, analyzers, flow meters, controllers, software solutions and engineered systems. With over 100 years of combined experience, SSi continues to satisfy industry demands with innovative technology, enabling customers to be more efficient and to produce higher quality products. For more information on SSi’s capabilities, visit www.supersystems.com.
Milacron is a global leader in the manufacture, distribution, and service of highly engineered and customized systems within the plastic technology and processing industry. Milacron is the only global company with a full-line product portfolio that includes hot runner systems, injection molding, mold components and extrusion equipment plus a wide market range of advanced fluid technologies. For more about Milacron visit www.milacron.com.”
Please excuse our indulgence but we have to mention that Isabelle Parkes was born at 2:15 AM this morning to Caitlin (Montgomery) Parkes and Andrew Parkes. Caitlin is the daughter of Dale and Gord Montgomery and brother of Jordan Montgomery. Long time readers of “The Monty” will recall that Caitlin worked at “The Monty” for a period of time. Mother and daughter are happy and healthy.
